In September 2008, I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, a huge shock to me. Within you will find my journey into the scary world of cancer and my struggles to emerge from it.

Friday, April 11, 2014

A new roof, cooking and pretend cooking, the first bike ride....

Josh and Allie

Michigan theater ceiling

Sand hill cranes

Michigan theater detail

Pensive Allie

Southern tip of Kent Lake. Perfectly calm. I love the mirror images of the contrails

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Maya the chef

Michigan theater marquee

Campus mural

Naomi and Maya playing catch

Pasta, peas and salmon salad from my cooking class

Our new roof being installed. Note how our lower windows are blocked off..a dark day despite the sunshine

Saw A Hard Day's Night here 50 years ago

Maya spent the day with Tessa playing cooks

Wall of the Michigan theater

Campus wastebasket

A busy week and I am tired. We had three days of watching Allie all day. She is adorable but hard work. As both of us don't need to be with her 100% percent of the time, I decided to explore a new area by running. Near his house are two huge parks of equal size: Kensington and Island Lake State Park. Although I've been to Kensington hundreds of times (my dad loved to take his boat there), I think I've only gone to Island Lake Park once and I am not really sure of that. I know I went off roading in a jeep somewhere while in high school near Kensington. Lots of lakes and paths..it was very pretty this morning. Since there are so many deer in Kensington, I assumed there would be a lot early in the morning at Island Lake. None. A big difference: one can hunt on state land (as evidenced by spent shotgun shells on the ground, why don't they pick these up?) and not in metro parks (of which Kensington is one). I did see the pair of sand hill cranes though. I underestimated the distance back to Josh's: turned out it was twice as long and included a monster hill. So I did a lot more running than I had planned, even more than my run the other day on my favorite scenic country road (finally thawed!!!).

It has been beautiful for the past 4 days. I even got the bike out finally. And after my Livestrong class(which I've missed so many of), Maya came over wanting a bike ride too in the trailer. Unfortunately, it was very windy by then and although my bike had air in the tires, the trailer's tires did not. A hard ride.

Our insurance company dropped us due to our poor roof. We have since dropped them due to the crappy way they told us we were dropped. We will have better insurance for less with someone else. The only downside is that they are installing a spy camera in one of the cars. Well I know which car I will be driving. And I can't believe Steve agreed to this (aka Leadfoot). We already have a spy camera in that car as part of a research study at the U. But we did need a new roof which was put on in 11 very noisy hours the other day and had our gutters repaired.

And healthy salads at our cooking class. Usually I get annoyed when people beg for the instructor to leave this and that out of the recipe but the other day after 5 years of taking this class, I finally made a request for one of the salads to be 'beet-free'. As soon as I said that, several other beet haters popped up. I know I have some silly food aversions and I try to overcome some of them but I will gag on beets, yucky things.

Last night a friend asked me to go to a lecture on campus by a famous jewelry designer sponsored by the art school. It was in the beautifully restored Michigan theater. Before the presentation, we were treated to an organ recital. The artist, David Yurman, was interesting. How people get into things that they do.

Steve and me

40th anniversary trip to Spain

About me

I am a mother of 3, wife of 1, and grandmother of 6. For years, I had been a medicinal chemist. Not long after I was retired early, I found myself with triple negative breast cancer. My struggles with it are in this blog along with the joys and trials of being a mother and grandmother. I love to be physically active, travel, read, and garden. Although my degrees are in chemistry and cellular biology not medicine, I keep up with the medical literature and report herein watching closely for good news against this deadly disease. As time goes on, my stay in Cancerland has become more a bad memory than a reality. This blog has since morphed into a photo blog in which I try to capture moments of beauty in my life.